Fire in the clouds

The kiss on my lips

Smells damp and green

Like the old tree hanging beside my window

Your ruddy hips

Rise with the evening sun

Which has my teeth marks

From when I bit them ravenously yesterday

Someone has slipped some sand into my wine

It tastes too earthly to be divine

If heaven were a drawer of dust and

Delusions of the delirious

I might just stay here

Oh, wait...

And Then Comes Hate

I will not forget you

Even when I allow myself to

I will embed you in my songs, like the

Cheap decoration that you are

It’s too late now, you have

Fallen into the snare of my words

You will be eaten alive

But you will not die

Do I look easy now?

I will not forget you

Until I get someone else

On my behalf to remember you

The Living Ache

Ah life,

You direct women and men

None too softly

To where you want them to enter

And where you want them to leave

The journey is bumps and lumps

With sharp corners

Routes mistaken

And other severity of roads

Ah life,

You didn’t make it smooth for us

You ensured the struggle

And the race

You bred

Poets and singers

In your wake

And you have assured yourself

Of longevity

As we die with taut bodies.

Rush of Death to the Head

Living was all too easy before you knew real happiness

Before careless smiles and open-mouthed laughter were introduced

Death now seems far too close for comfort

A mumbling hand in the darkness

Dribbling gore and ghastly

That you can’t possibly ignore

Crouching skies

How can I have possibly dreamt of flying once?

With my feet already buried in the sand

How can I have possibly dreamt

The sky on its knees just for me?

With what deftness did I say the ‘yes!’

So confident

Without seeing through the joke

Oh! For the time when I was naive

And young and did know anything better

When I was not so down under

These bones and skin

Cement and stone

Clothes and lint

When even if my feet

Were buried in the sand

My head was digging into the clouds

And the joke wasn’t understood at all

Jealous

I hover around my own body sometimes

When a part of me dies and leaves

A part of me alive

I hover and hark

Like a scavenger

Nipping at what’s lifeless

And dripping cold blood

Testing the texture

Of my own rotten heart

I chew and gnaw at my flesh

Wishing I could just choke and die

Already

I am jilted, jaded

And yes jealous

Jealous of my own self.

© Uzma Tathima

Bio: Uzma Fathima is currently a 23-year-old student pursuing her master’s degree in English in Tamil Nadu, India. She has worked as a teacher of English in an international school for two years. Poetry has always been one of the best mediums of expression for her. She has written around 250 poems and hopes to publish her collection in the near future. Her poems are reflections on life, death and love and are not confined to a singular theme. They are what she calls 'the impulsive monologues of the human soul'. She has published her poems in journals of her Alma Mater and 'Asian Signature' which is a  bi-annual  theme-based online English literary journal of poetry and poetics  with a yearly printed issue. It is sponsored by South Asian cultural exchange projects (http://asiansignature.com/contemporary-poets/uzma-fathima/). She also maintains an Instagram page and a blog under the handle of @the_poemhead where she posts poems and reflections prolifically.